A peculiar thing happened on my way back to the United States

For quite a while after I left I thought about my leaving the US as just a way to come back to it. Sure, I said I wanted to build a life, get fully immersed, start over... and in the forefront of my mind (or the parts I have the most control over) I meant it when I said it, but in the back (the parts of my head where the thoughts I would love to stop from occurring live) I knew I just needed to accomplish a goal (fluency) and that I probably wouldn't be able to shake the feeling that this was temporary. I left so that I could take my time over the past 11-months to come back.

But along the way, accidentally, and just by existing, I won the battle against the stubborn strangeness of this place. It finally relented and turned familiar. I know north from south, region from region, comuna from barrio, and street from street. Most of these things time will not be able to take away from me (at least not without the help of some civil construction) but the little things that I now have here that make Monday feel like Monday... which is to say awful and a work day... will disappear.

Time will take the markers of normalcy away from me. The canon that goes off at noon in the park near my house alerting me to the fact that I'm (yet again) late in getting out the door. The thick smell of exhausted people desperate to get home during peak hours on the metro. The familiar faces at my local grocery store... some of whom know me well enough now to smile and timidly ask in English "Will you sign here?" when I pay with a debit card, or note that the two boys I usually travel with are missing on certain trips.

The next time I'm back in Santiago I may not be staying near the park where the cannon goes off. I won't have to commute during peak hours because I won't have anywhere I absolutely have to be. And the people who work at the grocery store will probably be different. Santiago will always be familiar to me. I am lucky to have a place I know so well a half a world away, but it will never again feel this normal... boring even. The mundaneness is a kind of privilege. It's a little bit sad to say that Santiago will never again feel quite this ordinary.




But there it is. The tables have turned and now the United States looms ahead of me looking different than I've ever seen it before; looking exotic, adventuresome, weird.